Best way to constrain a prop to a character's chest

AGoodFella

Hey,

I'm planning to animate a walk cycle and I want the character to hold a shotgun and have it rest on her shoulder.

So I constrain the gun to her hand and then constrain the hand to the chest? Or a shoulder control? What would be the best way of going about this because I still want to have control of the hand so I can freely rotate it but still have it constrained to the gun which still rests on her shoulder.

Cheers.

musashidan

Link the gun to the hand and set the hand to FK. Linking the hand back onto the rig will probably break it. Plus there's no need as FK will bring the arm along when you animate the hips/pelvis.

AGoodFella

musashidan said:

Link the gun to the hand and set the hand to FK. Linking the hand back onto the rig will probably break it. Plus there's no need as FK will bring the arm along when you animate the hips/pelvis.

Huh! So it could be that simple. I initially thought of having it set to IK but you bring up an interesting point.

I think it will work. Plus, I will still be able to animate the arm as well so I can make sure it is pivoting from the same spot.

Thanks!

kwyjibo

parent gun to hand, then position hand so gun rests on shoulder. Create a locator at the point of contact on the shoulder. Parent the locator under the chest or shoulder. parent constrain the hand controller or parent null if you  made one to the locator. You can then animate the orientation of the locator to have the gun pivot about the rest point on the shoulder and hand will follow.

AGoodFella

Thanks, I'll give it a go.

AGoodFella

kwyjibo said:

parent gun to hand, then position hand so gun rests on shoulder. Create a locator at the point of contact on the shoulder. Parent the locator under the chest or shoulder. parent constrain the hand controller or parent null if you  made one to the locator. You can then animate the orientation of the locator to have the gun pivot about the rest point on the shoulder and hand will follow.

Man, I can't get it to work. I can't get it to work so that the gun pivots on the shoulder and the hand follows AND have the ability to animate the hand to do any re-grips of the gun.

I know there has to be multiple levels of constraining to get it to work but my technical knowledge isn't up to snuff. I'll mess around with it until I can get it to work.